Detective Pikachu Turns Your Favorite Pokemon Into a Middle-Aged Man

It's weird, it's unexpected, will it work?

By
Casey DeFreitas

This Pikachu is unlike any other you’ve ever encountered in the expansive world of Pokemon. Detective Pikachu wears his signature hat with pride, drinks lots of coffee, and tries to attract women to the best of his ability – even if that means he has to pretend to be a normal, less intelligent Pikachu in the process.

Up to this point, Pikachu has always been known for its cuteness, whether it was Ash’s Pikachu or another. The director, Naoki Miyashita, and producer, Hiroyuki Jinnai, of Detective Pikachu felt it’d be interesting to make Pikachu act in an entirely opposite way someone would expect of the iconic character.

“We kind of felt the opposite of cute is really this middle-aged man type of character,” Miyashita said.

Jinnai added that since it’s been 22 years since Pikachu’s debut, kids who played then are now adults themselves.

“It might be interesting, we felt, for a lot of these people to come back and see this, their best friend Pikachu from when they were a kid, is now this older middle-aged gruff man. We thought this would just be an interesting kind of experience,” Jinnai said.

It’s surprising and interesting, that’s for sure, and from the short amount of time I was able to spend with the game, it works, in a very odd way. Detective Pikachu - tragic, vague past and all - is an intriguing character. His relationship with the playable character, a teenager named Tim Goodman, is a big question mark from the start. Tim can understand him, but no other Pokemon at all, with no explanation.

The game has even more mysteries built into it. Tim's father is missing, for one (but then again, isn't most every kid's father missing in the Pokemon universe?), and some Pokemon have started rampaging through the city. Even Tim and Detective Pikachu's home base of Ryme City is different from the settings we’re used to seeing in the Pokemon universe.

“Typically, the games and the animated series focus on trainers and Poke Balls and battling Pokemon,” Jinnai explained. “We wanted to not really show that, and instead focus on the aspect of Pokemon and humans living together. For example, Pokemon are working different professions in this world.”

Ryme City is different from the settings we're used to seeing in the Pokemon universe.

Instead of traveling and battling with trainers, we’ll see Pokemon working in cafes, laboratories, and other places alongside people. Some of the appointments make perfect sense - I encountered a Garbador that disposes of trash and a Klefki in charge of a few important keys.

Miyashida said there are around 100 different Pokemon species (all from different regions) in Detective Pikachu, so regardless of which generation is your favorite, you’re bound to like a lot of them and grow attached to at least a few. We do know specifically that Charizard plays a role in the story, as it’s one of Miyashita’s favorites, and that Mewtwo is probably up to something diabolical based on the most recent trailer.

Detective Pikachu plays an important role as translator for these Pokemon to Tim. As a story driven, dialogue-heavy game, being able to converse with Pokemon in this new city is a highlight, despite how repetitive the action might be.

Generally, it seems like Tim and Detective Pikachu will come across a small-scale case and work together to solve it in each chapter, while connecting the dots of the broader mysteries that push forward the overarching narrative, like Tim’s missing father and the unexpectedly rampaging Pokemon.

The very first act involves a pack of Aipom stealing a necklace from a little girl. Tim and Detective Pikachu follow the mischievous group, but eventually lose sight of them. We’re left at a crossroads with some ketchup and cream splattered pawprints and a handful of witnesses, with the task of figuring out which way the Aipom with the necklace went.

Detective Pikachu, an obviously experienced crime solver, guides Tim (the player) through speaking to people and Pokemon alike, picking up clues - the pawprints in this case - and putting everything together in the Case Notes on the 3DS’s touch screen once all of the pieces of the proverbial puzzle are collected. Occasionally, Detective Pikachu prompted me to speak to him, and offered additional instructions on how to progress in bite-sized, voice-acted scenes.

There are some puzzles and quick-time events that round out the gameplay, but most of my time was spent exploring and talking to people and Pokemon in an effort to collect clues to figure out what to do.

Honestly, I loved talking to people in the core Pokemon games. The dialogue is often quirky and sometimes hilarious, and Detective Pikachu seems to consist of this almost entirely. If you enjoy talking to people in the core Pokemon games, you’ll probably enjoy the dialogue in Detective Pikachu.

However, don’t expect too much of a challenge - this isn’t a Pokemon game in the mechanical sense.

After playing some of Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 with no trouble, I asked Nintendo product marketing specialist Terry Chan if Detective Pikachu ever becomes more challenging. He said by Chapter 3, you’ll have been taught all of the tools you’ll need to crack cases through to the end, but Detective Pikachu doesn’t necessarily evolve into anything more difficult - just more varied.

Detective Pikachu doesn't necessarily evolve into anything more difficult - just more varied.

Actually, after the first three chapters released digitally in Japan, the developers collected feedback from players and eventually enlisted their colleagues’ children to help fine-tune the difficulty of the full Detective Pikachu game, which we're getting later this month. Some younger children found it to be too convoluted, so they implemented an easy mode to help them along.

Though the producer and director of Detective Pikachu say the game is for everyone, the many mysteries and Pokemon-filled dialogue will most likely delight children and die-hard Pokemon fans more than anyone. But, like Detective Pikachu himself, just because you need to get used to something being different, doesn’t mean it won’t be fun in its own right.